Thoughts by Wandrell (19 00 2007) – PC (VGA)
You want to be a hero, and what is your big plan for that? Completing some quests or course, and so you go to Spielburg, having heard they need some help and being well prepared by your recently finished hero course by correspondence.
This is a graphic adventure, yet it is also a RPG, and that blend is what makes the game shine. At the beginning you choose among three classes and some skills, each of which gives you additional ways of solving the problems you will face.
Maybe you prefer the stealthy ways of the thief, perhaps you want to ease the things with your magic or you just like to dismember all that gets in your way and so choose the warrior. Or a mix of them, because what the profession affects is some side quest, and not what skills you get.
Do not worry much about how bad you are at the start as you will improve just by practicing your abilities. Run, throw stones or daggers, fight and use magic, all which will increase your skills. Here you have the less used yet best RPG system that also avoids the use of experience levels, which at best are a nuisance.
And the RPG part is not just a decoration, it really affects the game, from how easily you will climb (if you climb at all), or how much strain you will stand to the solutions you will have available for the puzzles.
As you can expect, the mix also means the addition of fights, seems unavoidable with these things. They are not hard, but also isn’t much more than attacking all you can, throwing all the damaging spells you have and trying to parry as much as you can, or running away if the situation is hopeless. All of this for saving your life from all the monsters that lurks around and also for getting a bit of money and maybe some objects.
You may die in fights, but well this is a Sierra game so be more preoccupied about silly instantaneous deaths. Luckily they aren’t as common, and are more justified, than in other or their games.
Now, perhaps I stressed a lot the RPG parts, but really this is on its core a graphic adventure, of the old style with typed commands if you play the original version, or a more conventional mouse driven one if you try the one I made this review of. They are pretty similar, keeping all the good dialogues and the not too serious, not always joking mood of the game.
And just a note, this game originally was Hero Quest, and the first copies where named so but because of the game based on the board game with the same title they had to change it.
